


A villain in love, a villain alone

by superfluouskeys



Category: Sleeping Beauty (1959)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Phantom of the Opera Fusion, Angst, F/F, Malora - Freeform, a phantom of the opera au, and now kinda wanna expand, but mostly just putting it here for sorting purposes, i love poto trash okay it was like one of my first fandoms, that i god weirdly attached to, what do i even tag this honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 11:30:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13974186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superfluouskeys/pseuds/superfluouskeys
Summary: Was it only a dream that caused Aurora to feel pity for this strange creature? Was it a naive and foolish heart that saw more humanity than there was to see?





	A villain in love, a villain alone

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt response for a "villain kiss" that caused me to spiral back into POTO hell. I kinda wanna expand it into a longer work someday, but for now just moving it over from tumblr for sorting purposes.

It was hard to think down here, in this endless darkness.  Aurora wan’t sure what time it was anymore, even though logically she knew she couldn’t have been here very long.  Where was she when…the opera.  Right.  Third act.  It was late.  Must be midnight by now, yet she didn’t feel tired.  Just…lost.  Confused.  Hazy.

The monster…the Voice…the woman with the mask was pacing.  Agitated. Moreso than usual.  Maybe she, too, had a hard time thinking clearly, hidden away in this labyrinth she’d built for herself.

She had to know someone would come.  Unless she’d come completely unhinged.  But no, she was unhinged already.  That was what everyone said, anyway.  And Aurora could see it.  Had seen it, at first, but it was difficult, sometimes.  Now, even.

So much genius there.  Few tried to deny it when they read her music, and when they did try, they were the ones who sounded foolish.  So much genius, and so much beauty, in the music, in the voice that seemed almost more than the woman that owned it.  She could throw it around as though by magic, she could render it so soft, so sweet that it was almost hypnotic–that it was hypnotic, that was what they told her.  She’d been hypnotized.  Taken in.

That was all.

A dream, nothing more.

Was it only a dream that caused Aurora to feel pity for this strange creature? Was it a naive and foolish heart that felt for her plight, so much that she saw more humanity than there truly was to see?

“Have you a name, Angel?” Aurora wondered, hesitantly.

The creature stopped in her tracks, turned sharply, all wide, dark eyes and harsh shadows, and now she was not angel, not genius, not woman, but monster.  “What does it matter?” she snapped.  Her voice sounded off the walls and seemed to echo forever in every direction.  She advanced slowly, the measured steps of a beast stalking its prey.  “Everyone calls me as he pleases.  Angel, demon, beast, creature…” 

She was upon Aurora now, hovering over her, and in Aurora’s mind she could still see the woman’s true face, the one she hid behind the mask.  Why she’d put it back on now, after all that had transpired tonight, Aurora couldn’t be certain, and didn’t dare to ask.

She placed two fingertips, ice-cold and feather-light, underneath Aurora’s chin.  “Take your pick,” she sneered.

But Aurora wasn’t terribly afraid at the moment.  She’d gone numb at some point, onstage, weighing whether to unmask her would-be assailant or not.  Weighing whether to throw her beloved Angel to the wolves, or whether to throw herself to the mercy of a monster.

As it turned out, she had somehow managed to do both.

“Didn’t your mother give you a name?” she asked.

Dark eyes burned, crackled, somehow came alight with rage.  The woman turned away with a pained cry of “Ha!” and suddenly she was across the room again, pacing.

“Mother.  My mother.  Did my mother give me a name, she says!  My mother,” she turned again, so sharply it was startling, and touched her fingertips to the masked side of her face, “gave me a mask.”

Aurora found that she needed to swallow hard before she could respond.  “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

“Sorry!”  Aurora had expected another mad tirade, but was surprised yet again when her Angel grew suddenly very still and stoic.  “Sorry for what, exactly?” she wondered coldly.  “Sorry for asking, or sorry for the answer?  Sorry, perhaps, for scheming to have me killed?  Or…”  she approached again, long, deliberate strides.  “Sorry for bothering to pretend to care at all?  Really, you might save yourself a world of effort by simply spitting in my face as the rest of the world has seen fit to do.”

She straightened her posture and turned away again.  “My mother called me Maleficent.  An evil name for an evil child.”

“You killed people,” Aurora said, shaking her head.  “That’s why they’re after you.”

Maleficent turned to face Aurora again, and the unmasked side of her face twisted into  a horrible smile.  “Is it?”

“Aurora!  Aurora!  I’ve come to–!”

But he was met only with iron bars.  His words failed him when he saw Maleficent, for she ripped off her mask and cast it aside as though it were nothing to her.

“Sir, this is indeed an unparalleled delight,” said Maleficent crisply.

“Free her!   Do what you will with me, but let her go!”

“Your lover makes a passionate plea,” said Maleficent, folding her arms.

Phillip rattled the bars, but they were as sturdy as this building.  They would not budge for him.  “I love her!  Does that mean nothing to you?”

Aurora felt tears welling in her eyes and quickly wiped them away.  All the secrecy, the skirting around the issue, how dearly he loved her and how deeply she was haunted by this spectre that stood between them–this plan had been meant to save her, to free her at last from her dark Angel’s clutches, but could you save someone who could not save herself?

Maleficent laughed cruelly.  “No,” she said.  “It doesn’t.  What would a creature such as myself know of love?”

“Please, Phillip, it’s useless.”  She had never told him she loved him.  She could not bear to say the words until they were completely true, until they did not come with so, so many impossible complications.  He looked at her and saw only the best–the childhood friend he’d met by the sea, the rising opera singer with the bright future, the coy lover who stayed always just barely out of his reach.

“Aurora!”  His eyes landed on her at last.  “Let me see her!” he demanded.

“Be my guest,” said Maleficent.

“No!” Aurora screamed, but it was too late.  Phillip would not listen to her, and the bars were giving way.

“Did you think I would harm your precious prize?  Why should she pay for the sins which are yours?”

And no sooner was Phillip running toward her than he was strung up within an inch of being strangled.  All of Aurora’s hazy, numbed emotions came back in a rush now, and she was screaming and sobbing and nauseated and dizzy all at once.

“Now,” said Maleficent, and she turned that horrible, haunting face upon Aurora once more, “your handsome saviour speaks of such heady notions, of love and heroism,” her lip curled, and it exaggerated the way one half of her face was twisted beyond recognition, “but I know you are of a far more practical mind.”

Aurora shivered violently.  She clasped her hand over her mouth to stifle her sobs and slow her ragged breathing.  Maleficent left Phillip hanging against the grating and stalked her prey once more, but now there was something different shining in those dark eyes.

“Leave with me,” said Maleficent, “and you buy his freedom with your…compassion.”  She stopped, hovering over Aurora.  “Refuse me, and you send your lover to his death.”

“Why make her lie to you to save me?” Phillip cried, foolishly.

Aurora had rather expected it to draw Maleficent’s ire, but it seemed this was her ultimatum, and she could not be swayed from it, either more or less severely.  She barely reacted at all, kept her focus steadily on Aurora, that something in her eyes calling out, like a silent plea, a mystery among the madness that must be uncovered.

Aurora’s eyes darted between Maleficent’s face, horrible, twisted, impassive, pleading, and Phillip’s, determined, devoted, loving, perhaps naive in his own way, a way he himself could not see even as he so adoringly hurled the accusation at Aurora.  Phillip looked at her and saw only the best.

He didn’t see the truth in her nightmares, didn’t see the doubt in her escape, didn’t see the longing in her loathing.

“Why are you doing this?” she whispered.  “Why have you done this?”

There was almost a softness in Maleficent’s face then.  Even in the twisted half of it.  Maybe it was the eyes.  It was like they lightened a little, stopped being full of quite so many emotions all at once.

“You try my patience,” she said almost sweetly, and shook her head.  “Make…your…choice.”

And then she turned away again, fixed her focus on some unknown or imagined place that lay in the darkness that surrounded her, here and anywhere else she might wander.

What kind of life had Maleficent known, Aurora wondered, that had brought her to this place, to this moment?  What kind of cruelty dragged a mind that held such genius, such beauty into a place where only madness and ugliness reigned?

What could it have been like between them in a better world, Aurora wondered, where Maleficent was not a murderer and Aurora was not so dreadfully weak-minded?  What was real, what was not, what had happened, what had others told her, and what did she really, truly know in her heart?

Aurora willed herself to stand, braced herself on shaking legs and wiped the tears from her eyes, feeling suddenly more certain of herself than she’d ever felt of anything.  She took Maleficent by the shoulder, and Maleficent whirled about, ready for a fight, but Aurora kissed her, hard, and fast, and more than a little clumsily, and Maleficent froze.

Aurora poured every emotion she had into that kiss.  It was angry, and confused, and lost, and torn, and devastated, and adoring, all at once.  She had to steady herself on Maleficent’s shoulders, because her knees were shaking so badly she could not stand on her own.  Maleficent stood like a statue, lips barely receptive, arms held out away from her at odd angles.

Aurora pulled away, just barely, suddenly (somewhat ironically) frightened that she’d misunderstood, that she’d done something wrong.  Maleficent stared at her, wide-eyed and disbelieving, and then slowly, agonizingly, her arms began to move, and she touched the sides of Aurora’s face with just the very tips of her fingers.  Her brow was furrowed deeply, unmarred side of her face almost as twisted as its wretched mirror.  Aurora realized suddenly there were tears on Maleficent’s cheeks, glistening faintly in the dim light.

Maleficent leaned in as though to kiss her again, but was halted by shouting in the distance.  It was time to go.  The angry mob had found her at long last.  There would be time for other kisses later.  Infinite time, in fact.  And bizarrely, Aurora felt the faintest spark of hope in her heart at that.

But Maleficent turned away, sharply, and in the span of an instant, she was halfway across the room, hunched over her piano, and Phillip was in a heap upon the ground, panting, coughing, but no longer choking.  Aurora would say goodbye to him.  He wouldn’t understand…no one ever could…but at the moment, that seemed perfectly all right.

“Go,” said Maleficent.

“What?”"

More angry voices.  They’d taken up a chant.

“Go now.  Forget all of this.  Get yourselves to safety.”

The air seemed to leave Aurora’s lungs.  She felt dizzy and nauseated again, and she very nearly sank to her knees, but Phillip was on his feet and dragging her away, and it was too soon, too soon, stop, no, wait!

“Go!” Maleficent turned on them, twisted face full of untold horrors, voice booming all around them, inescapable, eternal.  “Are you mad?  Go now and leave me!”

And of course she had to go.  Phillip was dragging her away, practically carrying her, and it was  _too fast_ , but of course she couldn’t stay.   This whole mad plan had been meant to save her.  She’d been hypnotized, taken in by a madwoman. Tonight they would free her at last from her dark Angel’s clutches, and she would run away, not with the madwoman, but with Phillip, who loved her, and whom a small, sad part of her loved very much, as well.

Later on, when they had escaped the labyrinthine dungeons and were safely nestled into the carriage that would carry them to some obscure retreat where they might be married in peace, Aurora wondered whether she would ever erase the image of Maleficent, asking her–pleading with her to stay, from her mind.

Phillip stroked her hair and whispered of all the wonders they would see when their journey was at an end.  He’d come such a long way, done so many brave and frightening things in an effort to save her, and she knew she ought to be grateful.

But the question remained, and now Aurora imagined it must while away the rest of her lifetime, unanswered: could you save someone who could not save herself?


End file.
